A flow of a conventional application for refund of a goods and services tax (GST) paid for purchased merchandise by an overseas traveler during traveling abroad is shown in FIG. 14. A traveler 1400 receives a receipt for merchandise purchased or an application form issued by a shop 1401 when shopping abroad (1). After filling in the application form, the traveler 1400 submits the application form with a passport and the merchandise to a tax refund application counter 1402 (2). After confirming that the merchandise is not used, a staff of the tax refund application counter 1402 stamps the application form (3). The traveler 1400 posts the application form with a stamp to an application agent 1403 (4). Then, the traveler 1400 receives a refund of the GST by a method designated in the application (5).
However, in the conventional method, since the application procedure depends on each country, it is not easy for a traveler to understand and perform the procedure such as preparing of the application form and applying for the following procedure. In addition, it may be difficult to process within limited time from an embarkation procedure to departing of an airplane. For this reason, the traveler may have to depart without performing these procedures, and some travelers cannot receive the refund of the GST.
Another problem is that an operation of the tax refund process is not easy at a shop because various methods of tax refund are used and the shop may have to perform the tax refund process for each traveler.
The present invention has been made to solve the above problems in the conventional technology, with an object to provide a method of and an apparatus for preparing a tax refund application form, a method of and an apparatus for outputting the tax refund application form, a method of and an apparatus for controlling a tax refund procedure, which can efficiently perform a series of procedures and processes including a tax refund application and a tax refund process for the application, and a computer program that realizes the methods on a computer.